


there is just one thing i need

by cvptains



Series: you, me, and him [2]
Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Anniversary, Christmas Eve, Domestic Fluff, Fluff, M/M, Snow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:14:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21941989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cvptains/pseuds/cvptains
Summary: For their anniversary, Steve, Tony, and Bucky celebrate in the snow — and Steve wonders about their future.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Series: you, me, and him [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1579945
Comments: 9
Kudos: 73





	there is just one thing i need

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rhodey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rhodey/gifts).



> so leave it all (in the game of love) was published around a year ago, and their anniversary was christmas eve in the story so i thought i would write this follow-up just for fun but also because my own soulmate, kara, basically met me through this fic so. sentimental but merry christmas, kara bear! ily <3

The first thing Steve feels when he wakes up is an elbow to the face. 

He curses, then internally scolds himself, then opens his eyes, then squints at the ceiling, then rolls over, planting his face in his pillow.

What he says is muffled, but it's distinct:

“Who.”

“IT SNOWED!”

He groans, loudly, and throws one of the pillows next to him at the general area of the window.

He hears a quiet 'ow' and is only able to grin smugly for half a second before he's unceremoniously manhandled and lifted to a chest.

Bucky Barnes gives him a wide and obnoxious smile. 

Tony Stark peeks over his shoulder, grinning just the same at Steve. “It snowed!!!”

Steve lets out a noise of disgust, flinging himself out of Bucky's arms.

“You both,” he glares, “are going to die. What time is it even?”

Tony frowns at him. “Why, we did nothing wrong. And it's five in morning.”

Steve gasps.

Bucky smiles bright. “The perfect time for a snowball fight!”

Tony smiles at that, too.

Steve grips his chest. “Five in the morning. On Christmas Eve. Why. How. When.”

Tony sighs. Bucky rolls his eyes before falling heavily on Steve's legs, risking the safety of Steve's knobby knees but not even caring. Steve wonders when he ended up with these two mean-spirited, cold-hearted humans.

“Plus, it's our anniversary,” Bucky murmurs into the bed coverings which makes both Steve and Tony smile softly before Tony collapses on top of Bucky (who's on top of Steve, mind you) and Steve loses the smile quickly.

He contemplates life. “Both of you. Off.”

Tony grunts. “Snow.”

Bucky nods in agreement. “Snow.”

Steve nods his head slowly. “So let me get this straight: It's 5AM. It's Christmas Eve. It's our senior year which means every hour of sleep should be cherished and cared for. It's mid-winter when it'll snow many times. _I'm_ your boyfriend. And you believe that we should get out of the warmth and safety of my bed to go out in the cold and darkness.

They stare at him. Tony gives him a hesitant nod.

Steve twists his head to bury it in his pillow. “Why.”

Bucky groans. “ _Steeeeeevvvveee_!”

Steve feels the weight be relieved from his legs and accepts the fact that he has to start working out or he'll die/be eternally injured because of his two idiots.

“How am I the youngest of us,” he says.

Tony's head flops next to his on the bed and Steve lifts his own just a bit to squint at the boy's brown eyes. He's got that childishly joyful glint dancing in them and Steve buries his face to hide the smile that it brought out of him.

“Stevie,” Tony replies seriously, “it's the first snow of winter. On Christmas Eve. This is a miracle. I'm an atheist but even I know that this is a _Christmas miracle_.”

Bucky nods in solemn agreement, once again. Steve mourns his sanity for the millionth time since they started dating.

“Tony,” he responds impatiently, face still planted in his pillows, “I'm comfy.”

To the ensuing silence, he immediately regrets what he just said.

He lets out an 'oof' when he feels his entire body easily being lifted (again, gee, he really needs to gain at least ten pounds) and he sees Tony collecting some jeans and shirts and socks.

Steve clenches his jaw shut. He crosses his arms. He looks menacing.

Bucky glances down at him and gives a full laugh that shakes not only himself but Steve as well. Steve flushes and starts complaining.

By the time Bucky sets him down on the couch, Tony's decked in full winter attire with outfits laid out for Steve and Bucky. Bucky dutifully starts to dress himself while Steve stubbornly sits still.

Tony beams at Steve in that way that he does and Steve barely keeps from throwing his gloves at that face because unfair, unfair, _totally unfair_.

The cold doesn't exactly reach through Steve's coat, but he's grumpy enough to still feel cold.

Bucky immediately sets a course on running to the park that's at the end of the block, biting breeze and all, and Steve sighs, “Tony — ”

“BARNES, GET YOUR ASS BACK HERE BEFORE YOU GET A COLD OR GIVE STEVIE A HEART ATTACK!”

Steve purses his lips. Tony grins winningly as Bucky stops twenty yards ahead and impatiently waits for them to catch up.

“It's 5AM,” he scowls as soon as they're all together again, “behave.”

“Yes, mom,” Bucky retorts as he and Tony tend to do at least fifteen times a day. It's lost all of the endearment a little over three years ago.

Steve buries his hands in his pockets and grumpily walks on.

Tony elbows Bucky. Bucky looks at him. Tony stares. Bucky tilts his head, petulantly. Tony raises an eyebrow. Bucky scrunches his nose up but eventually nods compliantly. Tony nods victoriously.

Steve throws his hands up in the air. “You— I hate you. Both of you.”

“Look, just because you haven't figured out BuckyTonyese doesn't mean you're not cool,” Bucky reassures, “you're learning! That's what matters.”

Steve grumbles some more and Tony throws a look at Bucky. Bucky shrugs, grinning. Tony grins, too.

When they came outside, it wasn't snowing and it still isn't, but the park is piles and piles of snow as the city has only worked on the sidewalks and roads. Steve can't help the little grin that he lets out at the sight of it.

Tony falls, as he tends to do, dramatically backwards and starts flapping his arms and legs up and down. Bucky laughs happily and bright at the sight and drops to his butt to do the same thing not too far away from Tony but enough space for another person to fit in-between.

Steve chews the inside of his lip. Bucky looks at him, bottom lip jutted out just a tad. Tony's eyes are pleading.

He sighs, rolling his eyes as a smile overwhelms his face. He plants himself right between them and starts flapping his arms, too.

“Snow?” Tony prompts, eyes gleaming.

Steve groans. “Snow.”

Bucky flings back to his feet. “Okay, you lumps, get up, picture time!”

Surprising everyone but Steve and Tony, Bucky takes pictures fervently of every moment he can capture of them or things they can do. Bucky has ridiculous amounts of passionate but he mostly hides it under his apparent stoic exterior and Steve and Tony enjoy basking in the comfort of knowing him the most — intimately in a way that no one else gets, or ever will.

Steve indulgently gets up and Tony does too while Bucky snaps a picture of their clumsy snow angels. He smiles at the screen and Tony drops a quick kiss to Bucky's cheek at the sight. Steve sighs.

“Well?” 

Bucky looks up and Tony arches a brow. 

Steve smirks. “Snow family?”

Bucky smirks back. Tony _aha_ 's. “You violent heathen, let's do it!”

Tony's sent to work on Mrs. Snow 1 while Bucky happily sculpts Mrs. Snow 2. Steve sets his fingers to tolerate the seeping cold as he creates the two children and dog, gladly listening to his boyfriends argue about what the snow-women should be named on top on what their backstory is.

Tony hums. “Is Sam coming over today?”

Steve shakes his head. “Aunt is over at his. After party, he'll be there, though. Rhodey? Pep?”

Tony looks down, shaking his head. Steve feels his heart ache. 

College. The future. He looks down, too.

Bucky hmphs. “Well, they're gonna video chat, aren't they?”

Tony grins. “Like we'd let them not.”

“When's Sarah coming home?” Bucky asks.

“Probably four?” Steve supplies. “Maybe later. Her finally getting the entire Christmas day off is a miracle in itself; if she can wiggle herself out of a twelve hour shift, I'll be genuinely surprised.”

Tony stops his work. Turns. “Wait. House alone.”

Bucky stops, too. Grins wickedly.

Steve clears his throat, cheeks heating. “I thought my mom made it clear about things happening under her roof?”

“We were just doing some friendly groping!” Bucky protests.

Tony nods vehemently. “It was completely harmless? Everyone knows that I'd marry Sarah Rogers in an instant but that was just rude.”

“Harmless,” Steve repeats, tone undeniably amused. “Was Bucky's hand on your — ahem, _crotch_ an accident, then?”

Bucky splutters. “Clothed dick!”

Steve laughs. “This is why we can't be at parks during the day, you yell things like that in front of children, Buck.”

Tony shrugs. “Okay, but how long until I feel your hand on my dick, Stevie?”

Steve flushes. “Shut up.”

When they finally finish creating the snow family, Bucky snaps a picture and then they all start collecting snow balls.

“One ball,” Tony says.

“Two balls.”

“Three balls.”

“Four balls.”

“Five balls.”

“Six balls.”

“Sev— ”

Bucky drops a load of snow on Tony's head. Tony freezes. He looks at Steve.

Steve sighs. “Just stay away from the snow family, okay? I'll finish up here.”

Immediately, Bucky dashes with a manic laugh that makes Tony grin before he heads off after him. Steve smiles to himself and indulgently applauds when one of them manages to hit the other with a snowball.

With a large supply of snowballs at hand, however, shortly after they start, he stops their game. They happily trudge over, cheeks red and matching smiles across their faces. Steve haplessly kisses them — Bucky, Tony — each on the cheek, smiling happily himself.

They contently gaze at their snow family together before Steve picks up one of their snowballs. 

“Goodbye, happy family,” he murmurs wistfully before joyfully hurling a ball at one of the kids. 

Successful in the murder of Mrs. and Mrs. Areola (because his best friends were actually twelve year olds), their two children, and their dog, the three boys tiredly walk home after the eventful morning.

“Why did you get me up again,” Bucky asks.

Steve blinks. “Wait. No. Both of you. You guys. Got me up. I wanted sleep.”

“No,” Tony corrects, exhaustion in his tone. “You convinced us. You're a terrible person, Steve Rogers. I blame you for everything.”

“Fuck,” Bucky complains, arching his back to pop something. “Actual question is why did we start throwing them at each other after Mrs. Areola 2 went down.”

Tony slumps into Steve, and Steve cuddles into his side. Bucky drops a kiss on both of their heads.

When they finally get home, it's nearing seven in the morning and Steve's companions are yawning as they shrug off their coats and boots. Steve herds them to the living room and drags himself to the kitchen to prepare three cups of steaming cocoa.

Tony and Bucky are cuddled warmly under Steve's biggest quilt blanketing them on the floor in front of the couch. Tony makes grabby hands.

Given that Bucky's somehow the warmest of them, Steve complies with shoving himself as far as he can into Bucky's side while Tony does the same on the other side. Steve hums contently while he takes a short sip from his cocoa — Bucky makes an almost purring noise deep from his chest, and Tony, of course, moans loudly like he's a porn star.

It's peacefully quiet for a few moments when they all somehow disturb the silence — Tony shifts, Bucky coughs, and Steve clears his throat.

They glance at each other.

Steve blows out some air. “I know we said no presents for our anniversary since Christmas is tomorrow. But...” He jerks his head to the kitchen. “There's like a month's worth of chocolate chip and white macadamia cookies in there.”

Bucky smiles, soft and warm, and Tony laughs. Steve accepts their sweet kisses, happily, then returns them.

“I will be happily taking my half,” Tony declares and Steve flushes. “But I, uh— Yeah. I did the same thing.”

Steve blinks. “You made cook— ?”

“No,” he cuts him off with a shaking laugh, “I, uh. I'm not getting up. But. Uh.”

Bucky loses the color in his face. “Nothing like my birthday, right?”

Tony frowns. “You mean my attempt to get my boyfriend a car but both of my boyfriends agreed to be rude and take all of the fun out of everything and not letting me get either said boyfriends cars?”

Steve and Bucky nod vehemently.

Tony huffs. “No, not like your birthday. I just... Ugh. Watches.”

Bucky blinks. Steve frowns. “Tony, your definition of watches can cost up to thirty-five thousand dollars so — ”

Tony covers his face with his hands. “I made them.”

Bucky grins, a slow stretch of wickedness taking over his features. Steve feels his heart tighten in uncontrollable affection. “Oh my god. I want to see them. Now.”

Tony buckles both of them in with a draping arm. “Ugh. Back pocket.”

Bucky eagerly reaches into Tony's back pocket and Steve rolls his eyes as Tony's cheeks flush at Bucky's most likely groping grip. 

Bucky comes back carefully cradling two watches — one navy blue with accents of red and white and the other a silver color with splashes of red.

“Mine is red and gold,” Tony mutters into Bucky's side.

Steve takes the blue one and gazes at the face of the clock. Tony left all of the inner workings visible and Steve frowns at the inability to see the time but his fingers catch onto the top of the face and a thin film suddenly flashes over it, a regular analog clock taking over the face. He gapes.

Bucky, next to him, has a dialog face as he so loudly prefers to the "unnecessarily confusing and complicated features of analog clocks" which he smiles softly at. The face of the clock alternates between the time and pictures of the three of them that Bucky took himself.

They both flip the watches over and, engraved on the back, reads: 

**_You, me, and him._ **

Steve feels his eyes heat uncomfortably.

“No, no, no,” Tony shushes. “No tears! I literally hate you both, stop crying!”

Bucky and Steve layer Tony in kisses and Tony shoves them off, smiling gently. 

Bucky frowns a bit. “Okay, my turn. I, actually. Well.”

Both Steve and Tony loudly whine as Bucky leaves the relative warmth of their nest and Bucky shakes his head. “I'm not your damn heater!”

“You love being our heater,” Tony shouts back before he curls into a ball on Steve's lap. Steve cuddles closer.

Bucky comes back in quickly after he left and Steve blinks at what's in his hands. Tony tilts his head. “What exactly is that, beefcake?”

“Stop calling me that,” Bucky growls before presenting them both with photo albums.

They're both jet black with stark white lettering across the top: ' **awhile ago** '.

Steve looks up at Bucky who's pointedly avoiding their gazes. 

The first page says ' **before** ' and the photos following it stem from before they even got together — before Tony and Bucky were even talking — before Tony and Bucky even met.

Steve's throat tightens as he sees photos of him and Buck growing up, definitely taken by Steve's mom. The pictures show them growing and growing until there is an abrupt change — a toothy smile from Tony Stark swarms the pages and they flood memories and memories into his mind. Steve laughs wetly when the last photo of the section shows a sixteen year old him grinning with his two boyfriends frowning — their first meeting.

The next section is called ' **almost there** '. It's photo upon photo of a smiling versions of him and Tony or smiling him and Bucky or grumpy him and Tony and Bucky ones. They go through the seasons until winter, when there's a big one with all of them grinning ear to ear, flushed and in love, a year ago today.

The ' **there** ' section is mostly photos like that one but it stops with a photo of them at this year's Odinson party with a large amount of empty pages.

Steve looks up at Bucky and he knows Tony is, too. Bucky gnaws his lip anxiously. 

“I just thought that — We can finish it as — Aw, fuck, you know what I — ”

They tackle him over with hugs and kisses.

It's the future. It's always the future. Tony's on his trek to MIT, Bucky's aunt and uncle want him to go to Stanford ( _west coast_ makes Steve's head spin), and Steve always wanted to go to NYU. It's all... They can still meet but... None of them realized that long distance relationships may be even harder when there's three of them. And it's all terrifying. 

But with... with this album. Steve remembers everything and he grips it to his chest with his watch and let's out a wistful sigh. He hopes he always does.

“You both need to lose weight,” Bucky comments.

“Hey!” Tony yells. Then he looks up. “Oh my God.”

Bucky sits up. “Oh my god.”

Steve squints. Then looks up. “Oh my gosh.”

They glance at each other then hurriedly put shoes on, neglecting to layer on any coats or sweaters.

It's the hidden sunlight against the snow that makes everything so magical. It always is. Filtered from the clouds, the world looks so bright in a way it never does without any snow. And the snow's falling again, gentle on landing. Steve can't help but be glad they got up early this morning.

This time, kids are filtering out of the surrounding buildings and the world is a bit more busy, but Steve looks at Bucky and Tony. 

They're quiet, staring up at the sky with their tongues hanging out, eagerly catching snowflakes and nudging each other happily when they catch one. A snowflake falls on to Tony's eyelash and he shakes it off, blinking before his eyes focus on Steve. Bucky nudges him then realizes he's no longer playing and his gaze eventually also falls onto Steve. They're both flushed and happy.

Steve smiles, softly.

It's gonna be okay.


End file.
